Part 12 (1/2)
”Plus, I'll get to see my kids,” he admitted.
”How much money is Westinghouse putting into the project?” she asked, replacing her notional notebook with a real one, pulled from her purse.
”I don't have numbers, but they've shut down the whole appliances division to clear the budget for it.” She nodded -- she'd seen news of the layoffs on the wires. Ma.s.s demonstrations, people out of work after twenty years' service. ”So it's a big budget.”
”They must have been impressed with the quarterlies from Kodacell.”
Tjan folded down the flaps on his box and drummed his fingers on it, squinting at her. ”You're joking, right?”
”What do you mean?”
”Suzanne, they were impressed by *you*. Everyone knows that quarterly numbers are easy to cook -- anything less than two annual reports is as likely to be enronning as real fortune-making. But *your*
dispatches from here -- they're what sold them. It's what's convincing *everyone*. Kettlewell said that three quarters of his new recruits come on board after reading your descriptions of this place. That's how *I* ended up here.”
She shook her head. ”That's very flattering, Tjan, but --”
He waved her off and then, surprisingly, came around the desk and hugged her. ”But nothing, Suzanne. Kettlewell, Lester, Perry -- they're all basically big kids. Full of enthusiasm and invention, but they've got the emotional maturity and sense of scale of hyperactive five year olds. You and me, we're grownups. People take us seriously. It's easy to get a kid excited, but when a grownup chimes in you know there's some there there.”
Suzanne recovered herself after a second and put away her notepad. ”I'm just the person who writes it all down. You people are making it happen.”
”In ten years' time, they'll remember you and not us,” Tjan said. ”You should get Kettlewell to put you on the payroll.”
Kettlewell himself turned up the next day. Suzanne had developed an intuitive sense of the flight-times from the west coast and so for a second she couldn't figure out how he could possibly be standing there -- nothing in the sky could get him from San Jose to Miami for a seven AM arrival.
”Private jet,” he said, and had the grace to look slightly embarra.s.sed. ”Kodak had eight of them and Duracell had five. We've been trying to sell them all off but no one wants a used jet these days, not even Saudi princes or Columbian drug-lords.”
”So, basically, it was going to waste.”
He smiled and looked eighteen -- she really did feel like the only grownup sometimes -- and said, ”Zackly -- it's practically environmental. Where's Tjan?”
”Downstairs saying goodbye to the guys, I think.”
”OK,” he said. ”Are you coming?”
She grabbed her notebook and a pen and beat him out the door of her rented condo.
”What's this all about,” Tjan said, looking wary. The guys were hang-dog and curious looking, slightly in awe of Kettlewell, who did little to put them at their ease -- he was staring intensely at Tjan.
”Exit interview,” he said. ”Company policy.”
Tjan rolled his eyes. ”Come on,” he said. ”I've got a flight to catch in an hour.”
”I could give you a lift,” Kettlewell said.
”You want to do the exit interview between here and the airport?”
”I could give you a lift to JFK. I've got the jet warmed up and waiting.”
Sometimes, Suzanne managed to forget that Kodacell was a multi-billion dollar operation and that Kettlewell was at its helm, but other times the point was very clear.